


Not Quite

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 01:53:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4460783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for a prompt on tumblr. Kise is not quite many things</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite

Kise likes talking, but not when his cheeks feel like rubber and his own voice is grating in his ears, scratching and reverberating like a noisy train station in his head (like the train he's going to have to take late back to Kanagawa again because they wave money in front of his face and tell him he's a superstar but they make him schlep all the way out to Tokyo twice a week instead of ever conceding to him and yes, it's part of the job but they could do a little bit more to please him since he's actually a star with celebrity power or at least put some effort into that baseless lie that they do care about him as a person). And he'd said he'd call Momoi when he was done with work but right now he can barely find the energy even though she knows his flat voice and doesn't expect the bubbly perkiness, so he sends her a text instead. She fires back almost instantly; she's still at the cafe downtown and she says nothing about the text--but she knows him too well already.

There's something about someone who knows him this well, who has always known the little things Kise's gotten used to hiding (for one reason or another). It's disconcerting, and it was especially at first, when he was inserting himself into the Teikou team structure fairly seamlessly all things considered--everyone had accepted him as he was. Well, not Haizaki or Kuroko, but Kise supposes they're exceptions in a different way because with Haizaki it doesn't really matter (and he'll always see Kise the way he wants to see him, and in some ways he'll be captivated by illusions but solely those of his own imagination's invention rather than taking Kise's bait) and with Kuroko Kise will never stop trying to get him to bite the bait (and when they've let that slide between them it's been brief and with a basketball between them). And Aomine and Kasamatsu and the guys on the team know little bits of the other parts of him him, the way he acts when he's truly exhilarated and the things that really matter to him and their relative priorities, at least to some degree--but not completely. But being with Momoi, who knows him and does not expect to see the bubbly him all the time, is also liberating. He can talk how he wants to without worrying about breaking character--not that he spends all his time worrying about that. Because the bubbly him, the outrageous and extroverted and fun-loving loud him, is still him, is still a large part of him. But it's far from all of him, and it's the part of him that gets grabbed at by executives and agents and photographers and after presenting that as his one and only self for a few hours he's more than a little exhausted.

"Ki-chan!" 

Momoi waves at him from the table, pen still in her hand. Kise would guess she's either writing up some sort of plan or sorting out basketball things or both and even if it's not basketball the conversation will swing around to it as it almost always does, both because they love the sport so damn much and because Momoi is the one person he can have a serious conversation about basketball with. Even with the guys on the team, there's something between them--they're cautious of his talent and skill, aware that Kise has played basketball for only a short while. But Momoi, perhaps because as a woman she struggles to have her perspective taken seriously and having to prove herself as a competent strategist who knows the game inside-out and from every angle where a man's word would be taken fas is with no proof or doubt or surprise, and perhaps because she loves to share what she knows and talk about basketball, and perhaps because she knows Kise needs this kind of thing (really, because it's her, Kise suspects all three), is willing to sit down with him and listen and engage with him, never chiding him for the gaps in his knowledge that persist and helping him fill them in (but never too much, because she won't go out of her way to help competitors even when they're her dearest friends).

"Momoicchi! How are you?"

"I'm okay," she says, smiling. "How was work?"

Kise shrugs--he'd really rather not talk about it, especially given how many people ask him about it and want to know the details of how fascinating modeling really is, and while he sure as hell isn't going to lay it on thick about how fun it is to sit there and move his head three millimeters to the right and hold it while his neck gets stiff and then get yelled at by the director to Momoi, he doesn't even really want to complain. 

"What do you have there?"

He points at the piece of paper. And it is basketball strategy and they end up talking theory for a solid forty-five minutes before Kise really does have to leave to catch the last train and he's also more than kind of exhausted. And he waves goodbye without forcing a smile, and Momoi gives him a hug and tells him to take care of himself because she knows the way she always does that he's getting to the point where he feels as if he's narrowly missed getting hit by a bullet train and the next one's about to zoom by and definitely going to run him over. And it sucks that this is the most seriously he's going to be taken all week, that he's going to go back to his roommate who treats him like a fool.

Which, all things considered, is an advantage (and in general it's most of the reason he acts like a ditz; it's only on some occasions that he actually feels clueless) especially when it comes to manipulating his roommate into doing what he wants and staying out of the room when Kise needs (or just wants) alone time. And it's so easy to get his roommate right under his thumb when his guard is down and he doesn't realize or think to expect Kise to twist him around. It's almost too easy, but not quite and not so much that it's not worth it at all. And that's the thing; that's the thing about all of this. All of this fakery, pretending that he likes work and that everything is fascinating when it's not, the bubble and bustle and sheen of it, not being taken seriously--in the end the people who matter know the other parts of him and when it comes down to it that's what matters


End file.
